The Women's Organization of Iran (WOI; ) was a non-profit organization created in 1966, mostly run by volunteers, with local branches and centers for women all over the country, determined to enhance the rights of women in Iran. The WOI had committees working on health, literacy, education, law, social welfare, handicrafts, international affairs, provincial affairs, membership and fund raising. Its Women's Centers provided literacy classes and vocational training, family-planning information and legal advice. By 1975, the International Year of the Woman, the WOI had established 349 branches, 120 women's centers, a training center and a center for research. It succeeded in making women's rights part of the national agenda, but was dismantled with the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Structure Many women's organizations had emerged in the 1950s. In 1959, Princess Ashraf Pahlavi formed a committee to prepare the ground for an umbrella organization called the High Council of Women's Organizations of Iran (High Council). The High Council then coordinated the election of a 5,000-member assembly of women representatives, which approved the WOI and its charter on 19 November 1966 in Tehran. The WOI had committees working on health, literacy, education, law, social welfare, handicrafts, international affairs, provincial affairs, membership and fund raising. The committees were generally chaired by upper-class women connected with the royal court. The branch members were generally middle-class women in their late twenties or early thirties, often teachers or civil servants. The WOI saw its function as that of connecting small groups of women leaders at the grassroots level, who were scattered throughout the country. The basic unit of the WOI was a branch established in a locality where thirty women constituted the local assembly and elected a 7-member local board of directors, as well as a branch secretary. Branch secretaries met at the yearly National General Assembly, where goals and guidelines for the activities of the WOI were set. A central council of eleven members met weekly to manage the organization. The cadres worked on a voluntary basis except for some 40 women employees at the headquarters who were paid through funds from the printing company. The WOI budget was initially provided by local charitable organizations, national fund raising and funds from the school textbooks printing company. As the WOI grew, it convinced the government that its services were necessary for national development, and should be funded by the government. The WOI came to have 2,000